Most Important Influencer Marketing Success Factors

Social media is where people’s attention is now, and where it is going to be for a long, long time. People go on social media not just to amuse themselves anymore, but also to be informed. Brands that want to stay ahead of their competitors are ahead in understanding and mastering marketing on social media. They realise the role it plays in building awareness and recall and driving sales, and how important influencer marketing is to the whole process.

For a brand that doesn’t know, influencers are social media content creators who specialise in getting attention and engagement. Based on the experience of an influencer marketing agency, let’s look at the most important factors in the success of an influencer marketing campaign.

Total clarity on KPIs

People who run successful companies know that it is necessary, right at the start, to clearly define your goals, and how you will concretely measure your success. But as influencer marketing agencies have observed, perhaps due to a lack of knowledge about influencer marketing, brands often forget to apply the same principles to Influencer Marketing campaigns. It is crucial that when you start to plan out your campaign, you define your goals with complete clarity. This is done in the form of key performance indicators (KPIs). Before the brand begins a campaign, they sit down with the influencer marketing agency and decide what they want (followers, engagement, subscriptions, sales, etc.) and how much. Then comes the second step.

Finding the right influencer match

The brand usually knows itself and its consumers, the target audience. Sometimes, the brand has ideas about which influencers would be the right ones to carry out their campaign. But those ideas are, more often than not, based on casual observation and not on in-depth research and understanding of the influencer marketing space. On the contrary, influencer marketing agencies have studied the space and have quantitative research and data to back up their recommendations. Influencer marketing agencies are in the rare position of understanding both the client brand and the influencers, so their expertise becomes a significant success factor.

Evaluating influencer credibility

Some brands think that the number of followers is the only thing that matters when it comes to influencers. They come from a pure numbers mindset. But, related to the last point, the influencer’s reach is not the only factor that matters: in fact, it is not even the most important thing. It is more important that the influencer has credibility, and is seen as a legitimate authority in the area of your business. According to influencer marketing agencies, the chosen influencer should have a niche that would be the target audience for your product or service and should be committed to working closely with you on a strategy to achieve your goals.

Balancing management and creative freedom

Influencer marketing agencies advise brands to resist the temptation to micromanage influencers. At the end of the day, influencers are creative people. And they are the experts in building an audience and building a lasting connection with that audience, and they know their audience well (which is also the brand’s target audience). So brands are well advised to leverage the influencer’s experience, balancing management and guidance with giving influencers a good degree of creative freedom. That is how the partnership will be a true collaboration.